Hong Kong swimmers continued to make waves on day five in pool events at the National Games, with Siobhan Haughey and Adam Mak leading the charge.

After winning the SAR’s first swimming gold at the Games on Thursday night, Haughey maintained her exceptional form to advance to the semifinals of the women’s 100 metres freestyle with the fastest overall time.

The Asian record holder outpaced Yang Wenwen from Jiangsu by half a body length to clock in at 54.29 seconds to win her heat.

Teammates Li Sum-yiu and Gilaine Ma also joined Haughey in the top 16.

They'll compete again at around 7.07pm in Shenzhen on Friday.

Li, who placed fourth overall in the heats, said she was still recovering from the mixed 4x100m medley relay final the previous night.

“I was really tired, but my previous competitions in the second half of this year taught me a lot, like how to adjust to a tight schedule,” she said. "So my result this morning is okay."

Ma, for her part, said she felt fortunate to make the cut after several swimmers, including Olympic gold medallist and "Asian Butterfly Queen" Zhang Yufei, didn’t show up for the heats.

"I saw that many swimmers were not in the call room. I was surprised because I didn’t expect to advance to the semifinals, but somehow I squeezed in," she said.

Ma, alongside teammates Ng Lai-wa, Man Wui-kiu and Wang Xintong, then competed in the women's 4x200 metres freestyle relay heat but were unable to advance to the final.

Similarly, Candice Gao and Christy Lam missed out on the women’s 200 metres breaststroke semifinals.

But Gao still has a slim chance of advancing as her time of two minutes 32.65 seconds earned her a reserve spot at 18th place overall.

On the men’s side, 19-year-old medal hopeful Adam Mak on Friday advanced to the 200m breaststroke semifinal with ease, winning his heat in two minutes 15.35 seconds.

Despite his strong performance, Mak noted his morning swim felt off due to fatigue from Thursday night’s 50m breaststroke final.

“I think my morning performance is poorer because I didn’t have much rest after last night’s final. I will take more rest,” he said.

Teammate Adam Chillingworth also secured a spot in the semifinal, which will take place at 8.03pm, while Nicholas Cheung fell short and failed to qualify.

Meanwhile, Cheung Yung struggled in the men's 200m backstroke heats and failed to move on to the next stage.

The under-16 Hong Kong record holder said competing in his first large-scale event made him nervous and feel out of practice.