Ask Eimi Kurita why she sacrificed so much of her teenage social life for sweaty workouts in stuffy dojos and the young karate champion won't hold back.

She likes to win.

"I am very competitive," she said. "I hate to lose. If I want something, I have to get it, and I will do anything to get what I want. If I want to win, I will train very hard and do what it takes to get there."

What it takes is hard work.

Six, sometimes seven days a week at the International Karate Federation dojo in Honolulu. Running up hills. Doing squats and explosive plyometric movements. And beating up on sparring partners twice a day.

The reason behind Kurita's work ethic? A quiet fear that someone else might be working harder.

"Motivation can almost always beat me in talent," Kurita said. "I'm not saying I am a great athlete, but the reason I was able to get this far was that I was really motivated. I wanted to win. I wanted to train hard."

The 18-year-old from Hawai'i Kai has won gold medals in international competition for the past four years and has eight U.S. championship titles.

In 2006, she competed at the Senior Karate World Championships in Finland and brought home a bronze. It was an impressive debut at that level.

And last summer, Kurita skipped the commencement ceremony at Kaiser High School so she could compete at the Senior Pan American Championships in Mexico City.

Call it graduation with honors. She won.

Kurita started karate when she was 6, mostly because her older brother was involved in the sport. It was an awkward experience.

"I'm not athletic," she said. "When I started karate, I was really terrible. It took a lot of training to get decent at it."

Dedication to training meant Kurita missed out on birthday parties and school functions. She thought about quitting.

But when she was 15, Kurita's hard work landed her a trip to Germany for her first international tournament. She won four gold medals.

"It was a reward," she said. "It made me think: If I can train very hard, and I need to sacrifice things, good things can happen. It changed my mentality."

Now, she travels internationally two to three times a year and to the Mainland about five times a year. This November, she will compete again at the Senior Karate World Championships, this time in Tokyo.

Anything but a gold medal looms as a disappointment.

But she is starting to understand motivation on a whole new level — and it's a nice surprise.

"There are a couple of kids that look up to me, and that motivates me to do better and to be a good example for them, because I had that when I was growing up," Kurita said. "I had three older girls that trained so hard it motivated me to train hard. I want to be that for the younger kids."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.