Maricica Puică, née Luca, is a retired Romanian middle-distance runner. She is the 1984 Olympic champion in the 3,000 metres. One of the greatest female middle-distance runners of the 1980s, she also twice won the World Cross Country Championship and broke the world record for the mile in 1982. Maricica Puică (Romania) set the women's mile world record of 4:17.44 in Rieti on September 9, 1982. It stood 2.9 years, until Mary Decker-Slaney's 4:16.71 on August 21, 1985. Wiki link