Stock options should never be exercised before they expire. If
someone wants to lock in gains on their stock options and can't
sell them (for example if they're employee stock options), they
should short the company's stock, and exercise their stock
options when they are about to expire to cover the short
positions. There is no additional risk since any potential loss
on the short positions would be balanced by the gain on the stock
options. But there are two benefits. First is the interest on the
strike value of the stock options. Second is the potential gain
if the market price were to fall below the strike price.

Here's an example to make things clear. Suppose Alice holds
options to buy 100 shares of XYZ at $10 and the current market
price for XYZ is $20. If she was to exercise her options she
would get (20-10)*100 = $1000. Suppose that instead she shorts
100 shares of XYZ now and exercises her options five year later
to cover the short, when XYZ rises to $50. She would get $2000 now
and pay $1000 five year later. This is equivalent to $1216.47
today because she can put $783.53 in a bank account yielding 5%
and five years later it will turn into $1000. If five years later
XYZ drops to $5 instead, Alice would only have to pay $500 to
cover her short and her gain is even larger. So no matter what
happens Alice gets at least an extra $216.47, possibly more.