Rob McCracken, the trainer of Carl Froch, the WBC super-middleweight champion, has been appointed Great Britain performance director with the task of ensuring home success at the London Olympics in 2012.

McCracken, 40, takes over from Kevin Hickey, who resigned after only eight months. He has worked with the GB Elite squad part-time as a consultant since February and will continue as the trainer of Froch and three other professionals he trains.

Indeed, Froch will train for his next bout — due to be against Mikkel Kessler, the Danish WBA champion, in March — alongside the Britain squad in Sheffield.

“I think it will be an inspiration for the lads to work alongside a world champion,” McCracken said. “It wasn’t that long ago that Carl was in the England squad himself.”

It is a sign that the days when contact between the two codes was strictly forbidden are in the past. Once, a boxer would risk his amateur status by entering a professional gym, now the pros are welcomed in with open arms.

Derek Mapp, the executive chairman of the British Amateur Boxing Association (BABA), said that dealing with the professionals was an important step forward, with the World Series of Boxing — a professional-style tournament for amateurs — starting next year.

“It will help to have a more semi-professional approach, rather than the ‘one fits all’ style that there might have been in the past,” Mapp said.

McCracken will have overall control of coaching and training programmes in the build-up for 2012, as well as bringing boxers through from the development squad and responsibilities for women’s boxing, which will be part of the Games for the first time. Kelvyn Travis will remain as men’s head coach.

The BABA will hope that it ends a difficult period that has featured the break-up of the squad and the departure of Terry Edwards, the head coach, after Britain’s best Olympics in more than half a century, even if only two of the eight-man team from Beijing last year remain amateur.

“It’s a good chance to work with the best young lads in Britain,” McCracken said. “The most fulfilling thing you can do is bring through a young fighter and help them develop to the best of their potential.”

Going to an Olympics in an official capacity will also be something of an ambition fulfilled for McCracken, who boxed for the WBC middleweight title. “It remains one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t box at an Olympics,” he said. “I was in line to go to Barcelona [in 1992], but was offered a daft deal to turn professional and took it.”

McCracken will be keen to ensure that the present generation of Olympic hopefuls do not do the same.