Smoothing Riemannian metrics with Ricci curvature bounds

We prove that Riemannian metrics with an absolute Ricci curvature bound and a conjugate radius bound can be smoothed to having a sectional curvature bound. Using this we derive a number of results about structures of manifolds with Ricci curvature bounds. The authors were supported in part by NSF Grant. The first author was also supported in part by Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship This article was processed by the author using the LATEX style filecljourl from Springer-Verlag.