Light refraction

you have not mentioned if the finish line was painted too smooth and white or you put tape down to freshen the paint. I find that if the finish line has been taped to make it white you need to use something like trainers tape or white gaffers tape to keep the refection down especially when the athletes are back lit. White duct tape is cheeper but refects to much of the light. I've had it help some when I make the black lane intersctions 4 to 6 inches x 1 inch The wider than normal , again using cloth tape instead of shiny duct/carpet tape, seems to change the contrast ratio that the program allows and cuts the glare. An other thing to try is to change the GAMMA of the image.

the track is brand new, white line with black squares that show very well. The white turns to yellow near lane 1 (viewing from outside of track) and the runners have blurry pink and yellow auras around them. I may just move the camera on the leading edge of the line to get the red track.

The problem is not with the white of the line but with the angle of view. The colour camera has a three bar system, one bar for each of RGB. When the person runs through the line each bar get expose at different time. The difference is very slight, and the software attempts to adjust. The wider the field of view of the lens the greater the difference in time of exposure for the different bars. The images in your races that were closer to the camera likely did not have the fringe colours. The fringing will get worse if the direction of run is set incorrectly in the software.

If you set the the camera higher and farther from the track and then adjust the capture rate the fringe will decrease. The IAAF facilities manual has the recommended camera position 5 m back from the track an 5m to 7m high

The rule book needs the camera to be vertically over and looking at the first 2 cm of the line,which is why the black is now only 2 cm wide in the newer IAAF rule books. If the camera is ahead of the line, shows the red of the track the times are not valid for records.

the camera is on a pole about 20ft back and 20 ft up. I'll try zooming in to see if that helps. Thanks.

Also check the direction of athlete travel setting for the camera and also the frame rate should be in range of 500-800. We had wierd color fringing initially because of these settings. Also set the white balance..
Also, there is a great 4 part series on youtube talking about image quality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_EaIsVzuH8
or search youtube for "finishlynx".