Sakari Orava is a Finnish sports medicine

Sports medicine

Sports medicine is a branch of medicine that deals with physical fitness, treatment and prevention of injuries related to sports and exercise...

 surgeon, physician, orthopedist, and professor.

Orava has clinics in Turku

Turku

Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...

, Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. He has been dubbed as "Dr. House

Gregory House

Gregory House, M.D., or simply referred to as House, is a fictional antihero and title character of the American television series House, played by Hugh Laurie. He is the Chief of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where he leads a team of diagnosticians...

 of sports", and has performed over 20,000 surgeries throughout his career. Orava was the head physician for the Finnish Olympic team in four consecutive Summer Olympics between 1988 and 2000.

High-profile operations

Orava's client list includes football clubs Real Madrid

Real Madrid

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol , commonly known as Real Madrid, is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. The club have won a record 31 La Liga titles, the Primera División of the Liga de Fútbol Profesional , 18 Copas del Rey, 8 Spanish Super Cups, 1 Copa Eva Duarte and 1 Copa de la...

, Sevilla FC

Sevilla FC

Sevilla Fútbol Club S.A.D. is a Spanish professional football club based in Seville, Spain that plays in the Spanish La Liga championship.They are one of the most successful clubs in Spanish football having won a 1 La Liga title, 5 Spanish "Copa del Rey" Cups, 1 Spanish Super Cup and 2 UEFA...

, FC Barcelona

FC Barcelona

Futbol Club Barcelona , also known as Barcelona and familiarly as Barça, is a professional football club, based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain....

, Chelsea FC and Juventus. Orava has also been working with AC Milan since 1986, and he performed a successful surgery on footballer David Beckham

David Beckham

David Robert Joseph Beckham, OBE is an English footballer who plays midfield for Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer, having previously played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, and A.C...

 at his clinic in Turku in March 2010 to repair his torn achilles tendon

Achilles tendon

The Achilles tendon , also known as the calcaneal tendon or the tendo calcaneus, is a tendon of the posterior leg. It serves to attach the plantaris, gastrocnemius and soleus muscles to the calcaneus bone.- Anatomy :The Achilles is the tendonous extension of 3 muscles in the lower leg:...

.

Orava has performed surgery on many other top athletes as well, including Haile Gebreselassie, Merlene Ottey

Merlene Ottey

Merlene Joyce Ottey , is a Jamaican-born Slovenian track athlete. Ottey began her career representing Jamaica, but since 2002, has represented Slovenia, where she now resides...

, Didier Deschamps

Didier Deschamps

Didier Claude Deschamps is a retired French footballer and current manager of Marseille. He played as a defensive midfielder. As an international, he assisted France with victories in the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000...

 and Josep Guardiola

Josep Guardiola

Josep "Pep" Guardiola i Sala , is a Spanish football manager and former player. Guardiola played as a defensive midfielder and spent the majority of his playing career with FC Barcelona, whom he currently manages. He was part of Johan Cruyff's dream team that won Barcelona's first European Cup....

. Spanish runner, Marta Domínguez

Marta Domínguez

Marta Domínguez Azpeleta is a Spanish runner. She was accused of drug dealing and but later acquitted .Dominguez currently competes mainly in 3000 m steeplechase, a distance in which she was the 2009 world champion...

, referred to Orava as ”como díos” – like a God.

Personal life

Orava lives in Naantali

Naantali

Naantali is a city in south-western Finland, known as one of the most important tourist centres of the country. The municipality has a population of , and is located in the region of Finland Proper, west of Turku....

, Finland, and speaks Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. He has a wife, Aira, and two children, Markus and Hanna-Maria. Orava was the 54 kg Finnish boxing

Boxing

Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

champion in 1962. During his time off he enjoys painting.