The Hong Kong men's 4x100m relay sprinters were just half a second from making it to the final of the National Games on Thursday, with the women's team also bowing out in the heats.

The team of Chan Yat-lok, Lee Hong-kit, Alton Kwok and Chung Tsz-sing clocked 39.79 seconds in heat three, a little more than half a second behind eighth-place Guangdong for the last place in the final.

The SAR sprinters said they would have gotten a faster time if they did a better job exchanging batons.

"I think we ran quite well, but the exchanges really weren't satisfactory. Both the passing and receiving weren't good enough. It wasn't our best," Lee said of the race held in Guangzhou.

Chan and Lee said they would give themselves a score of 50 out of 100 for the tournament, because neither could achieve the goal of making their respective finals.

Team Guangdong, meanwhile, made the final without Tokyo Olympics relay bronze medallist Su Bingtian.

In the women's draw, Hong Kong's Chloe Chan, Chloe Pak, Serena Tang and Phoebe Kong finished with a time of 45.56 seconds, good for tenth overall.

"We raced quite well. A few of us had injuries or discomfort coming in. We needed our physiologist to relax our muscles during warm-ups to get us in better shape for the relay," Pak said.

"Even though the time might not have been what we wanted to achieve, but our exchanges were good. As the last race of the season, this was quite a good experience."

Pak and Tang added the tournament was their first major sporting event, and they were glad they had the experience of spending more than half a year to prepare for the Games.