It was the summer of 1977 and Lisa Lindahl, a University of Vermont graduate student, was swept up in the running boom, jogging 30 miles every week.

The running was straightforward. Her underwear was not.

“The only uncomfortable part was no adequate breast support,” she said.

Lindahl, then 28, tried binding herself with an elastic bandage, and going braless, before eventually settling on a regular bra, one size too small. The struggle for chest support fed a running joke with her sister: why isn’t there a jockstrap for women?

But, as the admission of Lindahl and her two co-inventors to the US National Inventors Hall of Fame proves, the sports bra was a serious innovation. And it came amid a revolution in women’s sport.