After he and teammate Todd Rogers won beach-volleyball gold in Beijing, Phil Dalhausser, 32, had to deal with an unexpected foe: depression. Following another successful season at the beach in 2010, Dalhausser wasn’t feeling like himself. “I had a black cloud over my head,” he says. “Nothing really brought me pleasure.” He found himself sleeping and eating more than usual. When a doctor diagnosed him with depression, he was mystified. “I was like, How is that possible? I just had the best year of my life. I was engaged to a great girl.” But depression has a long history of striking even successful athletes, who often don’t come to terms with it, seeing it as a sign of mental weakness. Luckily for Dalhausser, therapy and medication helped control his condition, and he and Rogers are well positioned to repeat in London. “Before I was diagnosed with depression, I never really bought into it,” he says. “After dealing with it, I realized, man, this is the real deal. This kind of sucks.”