On June 26, at the official practice for the US Olympic gymnastics trials, a tearful Skye Blakely left the arena in a wheelchair after suffering an Achilles injury. Two days later, following her was Kayla DiCello, who had to pull out of the competition after sustaining an injury in the vault at the opening of the event. 18-year-old Joscelyn Roberson was taking notes of all these from a distance, probably recalling her own harrowing memory. How could she forget the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships?

During the warmup of the team final at the worlds, Roberson fell short on a Cheng vault that left her with a severely injured ankle. Even at the beginning of this year, Roberson was not sure of her participation in the trials. So her tears of joy did not stop flowing as Roberson ended her floor exercise in the final rotation at the Target Center in Minneapolis, eventually finishing sixth all-around (110.975) and earning the spot of a traveling alternate on the Olympic squad. However, in a recent conversation, Roberson revealed that looking at her colleagues going down, her confidence had started to dwindle.

“When Skye first went down, I looked at Simone so fast and I was like, I can’t, I can’t handle this,“, said Joscelyn in a podcast episode by Blind Landing. The Apple Podcast episode notes how Roberson felt like having a panic attack. She explained how she had to pull herself up to calm her nerves and keep her head in the game. So Roberson’s emotion came out after her routine as she gave her coach Cecile Landi a long hug. Looking at her suffering with the ankle injury, that did not look unnatural.

“My ankle was still really hurt, it hurt bad still in February. It definitely was, ‘24’s not happening. You’re not going to get to the Olympic trials even’ because our team this year has so much depth. It was either you’re perfect or you’re not going to make it,” Roberson had said to the reporters after the trials. The fight seemed to be more mental than physical.

“It was hard to battle mentally because it was hard for me to be like, ‘You’re fine. It’s just achy,” Roberson had said about her injury. And it left her broke when she did not recover fully at the beginning of the year. She credits her support team who pulled her out of the situation, mentally and physically. While witnessing the injuries at the trials unsettled her initially, she used that to her stride.

The situation at the trials made Joscelyn Robeson recall her time in the worlds in Belgium. On that occasion, her injury suddenly brought Leanne Wong on the mats. The incoming Arkansas Freshman took a cue from that. Instead of crippling, she told herself to be ready for the situation, “because anything can happen at any point.” That very approach does not make her think that she is a traveling alternate and might never get a chance to take it to the mat in Paris.

“I wanted to really embrace whatever role I was put in. Being put in an alternate spot is hard, but I don’t want people to look at me and be like, ‘Oh, she was so close.’ I want them to look at me like, ‘She’s going to be their biggest supporter, she’s going to be ready if they need her, and she’s going to be screaming from the rooftops,” Roberson said, after creating history by becoming the first-ever University of Arkansas gymnast to join Team USA.

This is the confidence that Roberson credits to her training with Simone Biles at the World Champions Center. But do you know Roberson has some uncanny similarities with Simone Biles?

A freak opportunity that bloomed into a full-fledged success story

4 feet 8 inches and 104 pounds- That is where both Simone Biles and Joscelyn Roberson stand! There is more. Roberson’s first world championships appearance also came at Antwerp like that of Simone Biles. Interestingly, it was Simone, who was first awestruck by Roberson, and it was eight years before the latter landed at WCC.

At the age of 9, Roberson’s coach posted a video of her doing a standing back flip with a twist. The video caught the eye of Biles, who shared it on social media while writing, “I’m in awe.{perfect} some1 help me find this cutie. I wanna meet her, so she could teach me a thing or two #goals.” Since that finally became a reality in 2022, it is Joscelyn’s turn to marvel at Simone. “She’s (Biles) just insane. All the stuff that she can do and make it look so effortless,” Roberson said of Simone. However, joining the WCC seems to be a turn of fate for her.

Roberson’s family hails from Texarkana, Texas. In 2022, her mom, Ashley, a pharmaceutical chemist, found a new job in Houston. That came as a blessing for Joscelyn since for her, it meant only one thing- training with Simone Biles. And Joscelyn recalled how adamant she was about joining the gym: “I didn’t demand to move. They [Roberson’s parents] were demanding me to move. And I was like, okay, so if you’re going to move me, this is where I’m going.” That helped her big time.

By May 2023, just 10 months after her move to WCC, she started garnering attention. At the DTB Pokal Team Challenge in Stuttgart, Germany, she was part of the gold medal-winning U.S. squad and claimed individual gold on the vault and silver on the floor exercise. Next at the Cairo World Cup, she grabbed floor and vault golds and balance beam silver. Then there was no looking back. Under the watchful eyes of Cecile and Laurent Landi, Roberson flourished. So much so that her childhood coach can stop gushing at her.

“Knowing where she came from—knowing all the obstacles that we had to face—knowing that we were, you know, the underdogs for a very, very long time. And knowing the ins and outs, the tears, the blood, the sweat, and the working through obstacles. I mean, just, I’m proud of her,” said Kory White-Pemberton, one of her coaches at her first gym North East Texas Elite Gymnastics, Dance & Cheer.

Even if she does not get the chance to compete, going to the Olympics at the age of 18 indeed can be a huge learning opportunity for Roberson. She knows it well. So has already started dreaming big. The 2025 World Championships are already in her scheme of things. But as the teenage phenom said, LA28 is the largest pie on her plate right now. We keep our fingers crossed!