Tour de France rider has glasses smashed off his face after getting PUNCHED accidentally forcing him to stop racing

TOUR DE FRANCE rider Thibaut Pinot was accidentally smacked in the face by another team's soigneur DURING stage eight.

The French cyclist was riding past a feed zone - where staff members hand out food and drink to the peloton - when he was caught in a horrible situation.

As the Trek-Segafredo soigneur attempted to pass a bag of refreshments to one of his riders, Pinot was caught in the middle and took a fist in the face for his troubles.

His glasses were knocked to the side of his face as he felt the full impact.

And Pinot was then forced to climb off his bike, before receiving a hug from someone at the side of the road.

Reacting to the incident, the commentator said: “They [the soigneur] will be apologising profusely because that is a no-no - you don’t reach across a rider.

"No matter how much of an emergency, you don’t reach across a rider."

Speaking to  about the incident after the stage, Pinot said: "I was in the heat of the action and took a fist to my face. It happened right in front of me, I couldn’t avoid it.

"There are no real marks, but I had to chase hard to get back into the bunch. It was really a bad day from start to finish.”

It was a nightmare afternoon for the 2014 Tour de France podium finisher as he was also caught up in a crash prior to the incident with the soigneur.

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Belgian Wout van Aert went on to win stage eight, coming out on top in the punchy uphill finish to Lausanne, Switzerland.

It was Van Aert's second win of this year's race as he extended his lead in the points classification.

Yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar came home in third place, picking up a four-second time bonus and extending his overall lead to 39 seconds over Jonas Vingegaard.

Britain's Geraint Thomas currently sits in third place, one minute and 14 seconds behind Pogacar.

Fellow Brits Adam Yates and Tom Pidcock are also in the top 10.