This was the moment he'd spent years of his life training for! I feel a bit nervous for him.
Are you nervous because of the pressure he has to succeed?
I think he's going to fail anyway, he's not a great cyclist
Why would you ever think that he's gonna fail? As you said he has trained all of his life for this competition, so I think he has a fair chance of succeeding. It's not nice for you to hope that he's going to fail especially if that's really not true.
I think it would be a crime to not hope that he fails. The company sponsors him, they're paying him to lose that's crazy
It is not right to have a race set up to make someone fail. I think you should tell him about this so he will not have to take the loss personally.