Meet the Surgeon Who Operated on Beckham

When soccer star David Beckham injured his Achilles tendon last weekend, he made a beeline to the ancient city of Turku, Finland, to see Dr. Orava Sakari, a modest 64-year-old surgeon with an international reputation among elite athletes in many sports.

Orava had gotten the call from AC Milan’s club doctor at 1 a.m. Monday, asking him if he would be willing to operate on Beckham – later that same day. “It wasn’t so easy to get back to sleep,” Dr. Orava said, recalling that day. The call set off a day full of stress, as he contemplated the seriousness of the surgery, the news media, and the crowds that followed Beckham’s arrival. It is not a routine occurrence in Finland. Dr. Orava said he didn’t let the pressure get to him. “Of course one thinks about that,” he said. “There is mental stress and pressure, but you can’t show it. There’s a job that needs to be done.” Orava took an unusual route to the top of his profession. He was born in 1945 in the town of Kokkola, in north-central Finland. He had originally considered a career in the arts, but decided to pursue a career in medicine instead. But before that, he took up something that seems the antithesis of sports medicine. He was an amateur boxer, good enough to win the Finnish national championship in the bantamweight class, in 1962, at the age of 17. “Maybe I tought I had done enough damage so it was time to repair it,” he said. Today he has consulting rooms in Rome and Madrid as well as Turku. He professes to be mystified why they keep coming to him. He attributes it to being an outsider. A local doctor might be hesitant to tell a local star that his playing days are finished. “It’s easier for a country bumpkin like me to come in and say, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s over.’”