A familiar face returns to British boxing today under a management shake-up geared towards winning more medals at the London Olympics in 2012, The Times can reveal. Kevin Hickey's name will have a ring of déjà vu as the father of the sport's elite training regime during a 15-year reign as director of coaching at the Amateur Boxing Association (ABA).

Boxing is renowned for its comebacks but few would have predicted the return to the coaching frontline of Hickey, a veteran of five Olympics, from Munich in 1972 to Seoul in 1988, and five Commonwealth Games. The 67-year-old has been appointed performance director of the British Amateur Boxing Association (BABA), the umbrella group for the ABAs of England, Scotland and Wales that runs the Olympic programme.

Hickey officially starts his new job on January 1, having been lured back after a 20-year absence by the prospect of turning his once-controversial theories on elite development into gold in front of a home crowd in 2012.

He told The Times: “Once you have the passion, it's in your system and the opportunity with a Games in Britain is unique. Whatever I could have done for 2012, even attending the car park ... but this is like being a kid in a sweet shop.”

His appointment by Derek Mapp, the BABA chairman restructuring the amateur side of the sport, will be welcomed by many who considered his centralised approach to training - and the systematic hot-housing of champions using the latest scientific aides - to be years ahead of its time. Hickey's hands-on experience of boxing, followed by 12 years as technical adviser to the British Olympic Association and eight as a consultant in the high-performance arena, including advising the International Olympic Committee, will bring much-needed strategic vision to a sport racked by political infighting.

It is bound to cause some waves, though, particularly among old-school club coaches already alienated by the elite set-up in Sheffield and those in the regions selfishly eyeing their share of the £8million awarded to boxing by UK Sport until 2013 - a 38 per cent increase from the Beijing funding cycle. They will point to the Great Britain team not yielding a gold medal-winner under his leadership.

By contrast, Terry Edwards, the head coach whose position is now unclear, oversaw the crowning of James DeGale as the Olympic middleweight champion in Beijing last summer and a further two bronze medals from David Price and Tony Jeffries. Furthermore, he was not first choice: BABA initially sought Gary Keegan, who spearheaded Ireland's Olympic success with less resources.

However, Hickey's experience is unrivalled and it is hoped that Edwards, with whom he has worked in the past, will stay on rather than feeling that his power has been usurped.

Hickey, who most recently worked with the Northwest Development Agency to attract Olympic teams to training camps in Britain in 2012, is aware that he will have to improve the Beijing medal haul. “Expectations will be higher and it's for me to develop a team capable of delivering what is needed,” he said. “With each Games, the bar gets higher.”

The first task will be to negotiate new contracts with his stable of boxers that commit them to London 2012. The lure of a professional career is a constant distraction that Hickey knows only too well. DeGale is lost, having turned professional this month, and could be quickly followed by Price and other potential medal-winners without the right motivation.

Hickey will want to keep a firm hold of Luke Campbell, the European amateur bantamweight champion, and emerging talents such as Khalid Yafai, the flyweight, and Obed Mbwakongo, the light-heavyweight.

“We have to look at the relationship with the pros,” he said. “A ‘them and us' divide is not the way to go. I have tried in the past and, you could say, I have failed. There is a resource in pro boxing and we should use it.”

He will start by creating systems to fit the needs of boxers and their coaches. While full-time training funded by public money demands proper accountability, Hickey acknowledges the importance of local clubs in developing potential Olympic champions. “They do not come to centralised training because they have to, but because they want to,” he said. “We have to make it attractive.

“Once they do go, we have to make sure new ideas are fed back to the club coaches so they feel part of the team. I was a club coach and understand totally the issues. We need to develop that relationship and show respect. They are producing the boxers. The elite coach is an addition. It has to be what they need and not what's imposed.”

New direction, old hand

Kevin Hickey, a former schoolteacher, left the ABA after the Seoul Games in 1988 to become the BOA's first technical adviser, helping to turn it from a glorified travel agent into an organisation capable of delivering world-class services to athletes from one Games to the next.

During his time as deputy chef de mission between Barcelona in 1992 and Sydney in 2000, under the now departing Simon Clegg, Great Britain rose from 36th in the medals table to tenth.

He oversaw the creation of steering groups for nutrition, psychology, coaching and physiology and directed the first pre-Games training camp for the Britain team before the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

His pièce de résistance was the Gold Coast training camp at the Sydney Games, an idyllic location taken from under the noses of miffed Australian Olympic officials.

For the past eight years, he has worked as a consultant on world-class programmes for the IOC, UK Sport, Sport England, the Irish Sports Council and the Regional Development Agency.