An elite sporting couple who represented New Zealand in the Tokyo Olympics have put their dream Cambridge villa on the market for sale after retiring.
Former professional cyclist Sam Webster and Black Sticks hockey player Stacey Michelsen fell in love with the 1905 villa at 567 Maungakawa Road three years ago and bought it before heading to the Tokyo Olympics.
“When we saw the house on the market we absolutely fell in love with it. It’s got the amazing view, the beautiful villa that’s so well-maintained and the stained-glass windows,” Webster said.
The villa was originally built for the first resident medical superintendent employed at the nearby open-air sanatorium for tuberculosis sufferers in New Zealand and represents a significant part of Maungakawa’s history.
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Since then, it has been sympathetically renovated and maintained for more than a century with all the owners passing on a clear file filled with clippings and information detailing its history.
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The couple spent the Delta lockdown holed up in it after returning from the Tokyo Olympics and have enjoyed the peace and tranquillity the 9060sqm lifestyle property just 10 minutes from Cambridge provided.
“It’s just a little sanctuary really. It’s surrounded by trees and birds that sing – you are just so close to town, but just so distant in the sense of your view – you just feel that you are so much further away and it’s so relaxing being there.”
Michelsen retired from hockey after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and Webster stepped down from cycling last year. At the time of his retirement Cycling New Zealand dubbed him New Zealand’s most successful track cyclist with his accolades including getting silver in the team sprint with Eddie Dawkins and Ethan Mitchell at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
The couple now both have jobs in Auckland – Michelsen as a solicitor and Webster in executive recruitment – so have decided to move to be closer to friends, family and their workplaces.
Webster said they will miss the modern kitchen and large butler sink. Photo / Supplied
The 1905 villa was built for the first resident medical superintendent at the nearby sanatorium for TB sufferers. Photo / Supplied
“We just love being at that house and it’s with a heavy heart that we are putting the house on the market. It’s not something where we are absolutely in a rush to sell, we’ve been commuting and we can continue to but we think it’s worth testing the market and seeing what it’s like and if we can find the people that are going to fall in love with it for its beauty as much as we did.”
Webster said they were both homebodies and knew their next house in Auckland would be quite different from the character home that was in a private setting with stunning views out to Mt Pirongia.
“It just reaffirms how special our place is when you see how expensive places are in Auckland, but then where our house sits, the value that’s in there, people just have to come and see the view, photos just don’t do it justice.
“It’s certainly something that we won’t be able to have in Auckland.”
Sam Webster at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Photo / Getty Images
Stacey Michelsen in action in 2020 in Christchurch against the USA. Photo / Getty Images
The main house is a refurbished villa complete with stained glass windows, wooden floors, fireplace, intricate fretwork, clawfoot bathtub and modern cottage kitchen. While a second one-bedroom self-contained dwelling has been run as a successful Airbnb over the last three years returning on average $200 a night.
The large 9060sqm grounds meant there was plenty of space for an orchard with 25 established fruit trees, large barn which the athletes used as a home gym and four paddocks home to their two friendly alpacas and two sheep.
“The alpacas are great. They come and walk over to you by name, you can shift them throughout the paddocks just by calling their names and saying ‘let’s go girls’ and they walk with you up the driveway into the other paddocks throughout the property. “They are awesome animals.”
Webster said the biggest thing he would miss about the property was the mesmerising views out to Mt Pirongia.
A self-contained one-bedroom cottage has been run as a lucrative Airbnb. Photo / Supplied
“It’s an amazing house, it’s a great size and probably also the kitchen is amazing, the deep butler’s sink – we will miss that as well.”
More-RE is marketing the property, which has an RV of $1.82 million, and is priced by negotiation.
Earlier this year the agency sold an equally unique house on Thornton Road in Cambridge that had been dubbed “the Lego house” by neighbourhood kids due to its large, Lego-brick style stained-glass windows.
The large property was designed and built by artistic couple Adele Bird and her partner Godfrey Sadler and sold in September for $1.875m, OneRoof records show.
- 567 Maungakawa Road, in Cambridge, Waipa, is for sale by way of price by negotiation
