"The Olympic Games were a nightmare. I had been so stressed leading up to them that I couldn't really enjoy them."
A year on, he's still fighting to be compensated for the money that he spent on lawyers. A builder by trade, he has a good job and great family support, but his Olympic memories are far from positive.
"I'm still going to mediation to resolve the issue. I want to get my money back from the New Zealand Shooting Federation because they are the ones who made the mistake. If they had done everything properly in the first place I wouldn't owe any money. As it was, the Olympics cost me $16,000."
There's no doubt that Taylor's Olympic experience was traumatic, and he's still suffering from the effects of botched bureaucracy. But for most people, memories of the London Olympics will be coupled with a swell of national pride. Our athletes bagged 13 medals (six golds, two silvers and five bronzes) in a range of disciplines and rewarded late-night telly watchers with many edge-of-the-seat moments.
One year on from the Olympics, the Herald on Sunday caught up with some of the athletes who made the games so memorable. How is life treating them post Olympics? Has the year since been extraordinary or anticlimactic? How are those who didn't make a big splash faring? And did Olympic wins equal big bucks for our leading sports people?
Jo Aleh was one of the big winners at the Olympics. One half of "Team Jolly" (with Olivia "Polly" Powrie) she won a gold medal in the 470 class at the regatta in Weymouth, Dorset. Now taking a four-day break in Paris after competitions in Europe, the down-to-earth North Shore resident says for her the London Olympics were all about getting the job done.
"I'd been to the Olympics in Beijing, and that was pretty overwhelming, but in London I was only focused on sailing. We weren't at the Olympic Village (in fact we hired a house in Dorset) so we were away from the big venues."
The modest 26-year-old says that crossing the finish line first in the winning race felt "surreal". "Polly and I kind of looked at each other like 'we did it'. It was such an odd feeling, achieving something I'd been working towards for years."
The year since the Olympic Games has been eventful for Aleh. She's a keen cyclist (it's a key part of her fitness routine) and she's competed in three six-hour road races. She's also studying for a Bachelor of Information Science extramurally through Massey University, and has been competing with Powrie in Europe.
Though winning a gold medal at the Olympics has helped garner more sponsors, it has not meant big bucks or major media exposure.
She says women sailors in New Zealand don't have the same cultural cachet as their male counterparts, and opportunities can be few and far between. "There are definitely fewer options and less publicity for female sailors in New Zealand. Hopefully this will change, but we'll have to wait and see."
Women sailors may be out in the cold when it comes to sponsorship and career opportunities, but this is not the case for all our medal-winning women. Gold-medallist kayaker Lisa Carrington, BMX silver medallist Sarah Walker and paralympic gold winner Sophie Pascoe landed lucrative contracts fronting Beef+Lamb NZ advertisements post-Olympics. Details of the exact amount paid are under wraps, but estimates put the figure as high as $75,000.
A medal and a pretty face seem to be a winning combo for this trio, but money post-Olympics isn't always guaranteed. Funding for high-performance sports can be hard to come by.
Shortly after last year's Olympics, the Government announced it was freezing funding for two years. This stuck in the craw of many sports people, especially given the athletes' remarkable results.
High Performance Sport NZ announced the available money would be targeted at sports that were likely to yield good results at Olympic level. Rowing got the most ($18.4 million), closely followed by cycling ($15.6m) and yachting ($11.2m).
Twelve sports received 81 per cent of the $31 million annual funding and the rest was divvied up between the less successful sports. Additionally, certain athletes were eligible for scholarships and performance-enhancement grants.
Scholarships and grants can be useful for athletes, but many have to find other ways to support themselves while they train. Many of those who competed last year are professional sportspeople who make money from competitions or are on contract and play sports such as basketball and football. (The International Olympic Committee has allowed professional players to compete at the games since 1986.)
Many athletes rely on sponsors, and this can mean good money: gold medal-winning rowers Hamish Bond and Eric Murray's lucrative sponsorship deal with ANZ is an example.
But others have to maintain day jobs to keep their sporting dreams alive, some of which are rather unconventional. Taekwando rep Logan Campbell hit the headlines when he became embroiled in a battle with NZOC over a brothel he'd bought to fund his Olympic aspirations.
The committee threatened legal action against Campbell if he linked the brothel to the Olympics. He sold the business in 2011, and secured a place in the team. Disappointingly, his Olympic campaign wasn't quite so entertaining; he was knocked out 6-10 in his first fight.
Not many have to resort to such extreme measures.
Weightlifter Richie Patterson chose a road more travelled to fund his Olympics campaign, working as a coach at a gym. Patterson is best known for gaining entry to the Olympics through the heroic lift of injured weightlifter Tevita Ngalu.
This gave New Zealand enough points for a competitor in the games.
Patterson's chosen sport has drifted off the radar when it comes to funding and public awareness in recent years, and his early training was funded by his work as a coach.
A former Auckland Grammar 1st XV rugby representative, Patterson was brought up on a farm south of Auckland. He was used to hard work, and committed to achieving top results.
"When I was 18 I was training at a weightlifting gym in Auckland. I used to watch [2002 Olympics gold medallist] Nigel Avery train there and it inspired me to go down that path and follow my dream," he says.
"I decided that I would train like a professional even though I wasn't a professional."
As well as working as a coach, Patterson had the support of former Olympian Tony Ebert for his Olympic prep.
He was provided advice and sponsorship for the young athlete throughout his build-up to the Olympics, in which Patterson earned a respectable 14th place.
Patterson says that though he still has to work to fund his sport, the exposure from the Olympics has helped him fulfil his career dreams. "I've always wanted to own a gym, and since the Olympics people have come on board to help me open one."
Functional Strength Crossfit is based in Albany, and from here Patterson is training future weight-lifting stars. "I have one male and one female weight-lifter that have potential to be future stars," he says. "I'd love to see them win a medal in the future."
Teneale Hatton, 23, is also looking to the future.
The Auckland-based canoeist competed in the women's K-1 500m races in London, against the top 27 women in the world. She came a respectable 15th and hopes to improve on that at Rio in 2016. "I was really pleased with my result. I came fourth in the semis, and I was really close to the front bunch."
Hatton was based at Eton Dorney for the Olympics, and stayed at the satellite village in Royal Holloway. "It was great at the village, everyone was so friendly.
"There was a huge food tent, the size of four football fields, where everyone ate. I loved the Asian food best," she laughs.
In the year since the Olympics she has worked as a paid surf lifesaver, and studied for a Bachelor of Commerce in Commercial Law at Auckland University. She is also studying paramedics at Unitec and, of course, training intensively on the lake.
The impact of the 2012 Olympics on our athletes is undeniable, even a year on.
There are sponsorship commitments to be met, opportunities to be seized, rankings to be defended, memories to be savoured. Ambitions have been fuelled, with many athletes using the lessons learned at the London Olympics as inspiration for greater results in Rio 2016.
But for others there are debts to be paid. Back in Levin, Taylor's Olympic battle is ongoing. Mediation continues in a cycle of accusation and denial; his money is still nowhere to be seen.
For him the Olympics was less about guts and glory, more about the bumblings of bureaucracy.
"It's really annoying because the Olympics should have been one of the best moments of my life," he says. "I'd been training for the London Games for years. "Instead, they cost me $16,000. And I'm no closer to getting it back."
