If not, what are the risks (other than getting unlucky and wasting a few minutes of my time)?
No matter what I've done with the cloning Glitch it will always work.
Unless you're cloning a Pokemon with no HP because of hacking (due to the order of things you can't do the berry glitch to lower it to 0 without fainting it) in which the clone will be a bad egg.
Source: Over 600+ collective hours of Emerald gameplay and personal experience.