Geodesic loops and periodic geodesics on a Riemannian manifold diffeomorphic to \(S^{3}\) (Q2642278)

Let \(M^n\) be a closed 2-connected Riemannian manifold, such that \(\pi_{3}(M^n) \neq \{0\}\). The author proves that either there exists a periodic geodesic on \(M^n\) of length \(\leq 6 d\), where \(d\) is the diameter of \(M^n\), or at each point \(p \in M^n\) there exists a geodesic loop of length \(\leq 2 d\).