A WEEK tomorrow, some 4000 women will race round Glasgow's west end in the Britannia Women's 10,000 metres. At the sharp end, there will be #450 for the first finisher, and a further #500 in unit trusts should last year's winning time be beaten, but the real winners will be every single starter, for the sixth year of Scotland's largest all-female race has helped trigger a sports revolution.

Outdoor pitch sport apart, female users of leisure facilities in Glasgow outnumber men - 53% are now women - a Parks and Recreation department statistic which has even prompted complaint from a mysoginist minority who challenge the council's right to stage women-only sessions because it restricts male access. The reality is that the presence of men at many activities intimidates women.

This data is culled from the draft of the city's future strategy document on sport, recreation, and play, which, coincidentally, is to be unveiled the day after the women's 10k in the City Chambers.

Bureaucratic tracts can be arid, but this paper, drawn up with close reference to the new Scottish Sports Council vision, Sport 21, after approaches to every club in Glasgow, reveals lofty aspirations.

It reveals that consultants have been hired by a consortium attempting to attract the headquarters of the Scottish Institute of Sport, potentially the most influential sport development of the decade. It comprises the three universities, Glasgow Development Agency, and City Council. The proposal is to establish a Jordanhill-Scotstoun sports village, linking the campus to the recreation facilities at the former showgrounds. Rivals include Stirling and Edinburgh.

''With 50,000 students in the city, including many top sports competitors, and 1.3m in the immediate catchment area, we believe we can make an excellent case,'' said Brian Porteous, Glasgow's acting director of Parks and Recreation. ''Glasgow is committed to supplying the structure, and believes the facilities we can offer are unique, probably the best in the UK, and that we are in a position to do something of major significance for Scottish sport.''

He confirms the city is actively pursuing restoration to the international athletics calendar, indoors and out, including cross-country. An international orienteering event, for the world's top 15 men and women, has been secured for an event in Kelvingrove Park next summer.

But developments are not just about the elite. Marketing the city's Passport to Recreation will be more intensive. Sport 21 identified difficulties of access for those on low incomes. The passport scheme provides a range of activities at discounts of up to more than 50%. People on jobseekers or disability living allowance, incapacity or housing benefit, unemployed, registered disabled, or senior citizens, pay #2 per year (#1 for juveniles, #5 for families) for the passport, yet more than a quarter of sports centre users are unaware of this.

Given that Parks and Recreation is soon to be subsumed into a new department with wider responsibilities than any other in the city, it is to be hoped that the new director, whoever he may be, will play ball with the document. P&R, Museums and Art Galleries, Performing Arts, and Libraries, are to come under a single directorate - cultural and leisure services - the post having been advertised for the first time yesterday.

This suggests city fathers wish to look further than Julian Spalding, maverick head of museums and art galleries, and only sitting director in any of the four departments. The new directorship has awesome, even intimidating scope. It is ironic that when devolved government is the national agenda, that Glasgow should move the opposite way in delivery of services.

Most males will recall the reaction of the neighbour with the immaculate garden when the ball sailed into a flower bed. Yet recreation became the responsibility of the parks department many years ago, for no better reason than that the city's limited leisure facilities - putting greens, bowling greens, and tennis courts, but not a single sports centre in all of Glasgow - were within parks. So, horticulturists inherited recreation.

Despite this, Glasgow now has a sport develop-ment network the envy of every city in Britain. Maybe horticulturists know how to make things blossom, but there was no guarantee.

Doubtless, economies can be made - inevitably, that is what this amalgamation is all about - but is there a librarian, graphic or performing arts director, out there who truly understands sport from social to competitive level?

Can a sport jock serve, unbiased, the sweep of activities proposed in the new directorate? Time will tell, but it would be a pity, just when Glasgow seems to have a winning gameplan, if an untutored captain is given a ball he is ill-equipped to control.