The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

A Capybara bathes in the hot spring water at the Saitama Children's zoo in Higashi Matsuyama city, Saitama prefecture on December 21, 2014. Seven capybaras in the zoo, originally from South America, enjoyed the hot spring water on the chilly winter day in Japan. (Photo by Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP Photo)

A Rajasthani folk dance artist performs while standing on two glasses during the “Dhora Ri Mahak” festival in Bhopal, India, 07 January 2015. The event is being organised by the “Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya” anthropology museum. (Photo by Sanjeev Gupta/EPA)

A sunflower “smiles” in a field in Tokyo on August 7, 2014. Some 20,000 sunflowers were enjoyed by visitors to the area this week. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

Members of the “Avalon” team wearing 14th century knight costumes fight against each other on the bank of the Yenisei River during the regional amateurs tournament of clubs of historical reconstruction, “The Battle of the Nations 2015. Siberia”, in Krasnoyarsk January 24, 2015. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti on the International Space Station 3 February 2015 during her Futura mission. Samantha is living and working on the Station as part of the Expedition 42 crew. Picture released on February 10, 2015. (Photo by ESA/NASA)

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She “lost her mind, started doing heroin”, after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, “trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes”.

Baloo (R), a North American Black Bear, rubs snouts with his companion Shere Hkhan, a Bengal tiger, inside their shared enclosure at Noah's Ark animal sanctuary in Locust Grove, Georgia, USA, 28 August 2014. According to the facility, the pair and a lion named Leo, were confiscated at a young age from a drug dealer's basement in Atlanta, Georgia. Noah's Ark cares for about 100 different species of animals on a 250 acre farm since 1990. (Photo by Erik S. Lesser/EPA)