This paper concerns complete noncompact manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature. Roughly, we say that M has the loops to infinity property if given any noncontractible closed curve, C, and given any compact set, K, there exists a closed curve contained in M\K which is homotopic to C.
The main theorems in this paper are the following.
Theorem I: If M has positive Ricci curvature then it has the loops to infinity property.
Theorem II: If M has nonnegative Ricci curvature then it either has the loops to infinity property or it is isometric to a flat normal bundle over a compact totally geodesic submanifold and its double cover is split.
Theorem III: Let M be a complete riemannian manifold with the loops to infinity property along some ray starting at a point, p. Let D containing p be a precompact region with smooth boundary and S be any connected component of the boundary containing a point, q, on the ray. Then the map from the fundamental group of S based at q to the fundamental group of Cl(D) based at p induced by the inclusion map is onto.